Germany's Haunting Emptiness in Goal

Manuel Neuer is the latest in a line of German goalkeepers regarded by many as the best in the world. German soccer fans often reminisce about the greatness of Sepp Maier and Harald Schumacher and Oliver Kahn, and if Neuer helps Germany win the World Cup final Sunday, his place in history - even at age 28 - will be secure.

Yet there is also a darker side to the lineage of German goalkeepers, an incident that lingers over German fans and also started Neuer along his current path.

It happened in 2009. Neuer was playing for the German under-21 national team, not even on the radar of Germany coach Joachim Loew. Loew's preferred starting goalkeeper as the team headed toward the 2010 World Cup was Robert Enke, a tall, rangy player who spent time with top clubs like Barcelona, Benfica and Fenerbahce before becoming a mainstay at the German club Hannover 96.

On Nov. 10, a Tuesday, Ronald Reng, one of Enke's close friends and a writer who had been working with Enke on a book, called Enke on his cellphone. Enke was normally friendly and warm, but on this day, Reng recalled in an interview, Enke was brusque and curt. His voice sounded strained.

"I did not think too much of it because I thought maybe he is in the car and he is feeling stress because of the traffic or something," Reng said. "We only talked for a moment. He told me he would phone me back that night."

The call never came. Shortly after hanging up with Reng, Enke drove his car to a train crossing near Hanover. He parked, left his wallet on the front seat and walked toward the tracks. When a regional express train approached, he threw himself in front of the locomotive, killing himself. He was 32.

Enke's death shocked the country. Reng, an author and journalist, said it was the "Kennedy moment of German football" - all Germans remember what they were doing when they heard the news.

Reng was cooking tortellini in his kitchen, he said, when he received a phone call from Thomas Hitzlsperger, a former defender for the German national team.

The conversation was stunted; it was as if Hitzlsperger, who was with the national team as it prepared for a friendly match, could not believe the words he was saying while Reng could not process the words he was hearing.

Enke was not with the national team for that exhibition because he had been recovering from a stomach illness. Now, Reng recalled, Hitzlsperger was telling him that his friend was gone.

"It was surreal," he said.

It was later revealed that Enke had been dealing with clinical depression. He and his wife had seen their 2-year-old daughter, Lara, die from a rare heart condition in 2006. They adopted another baby, who was 10 months old at the time of Enke's death, but Enke struggled to get over his grief. He was buried next to Lara's grave.

Enke was also haunted by the pressures of being a professional goalkeeper. In Reng's book "A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke," he described Enke's emotions about being picked to play for Barcelona in a game against an inferior, third-division team.

"If everything  went as planned, Barca would win 3-0 or 4-0 and no one would mention the goalkeeper," Reng wrote. "If it went wrong, he would get the blame."

Enke ended up making a mistake in the game, and Barcelona lost, 3-2. Afterward, Frank de Boer, a top player for Barcelona, screamed at Enke as the goalkeeper stood silently.

"We knew that he had had these difficult times, these points where he was depressed," Reng said Friday. "But it was not clear that it would ever go so far."

The reaction to Enke's death was widespread. The Germans canceled their next match, against Chile, as the players tried to deal with their sorrow. Some 40,000 people showed up to pay their respects to Enke when his coffin was placed in Hannover's stadium. Michael Ballack and Per Mertesacker carried the wreath at the memorial service for Enke.

"I am totally shocked, completely empty," Loew said at the time.

When Germany returned to the field more than a week later for a game against Ivory Coast, it was Neuer who played in goal because Rene Adler, who had been seen as Enke's main competition to be the starter at the World Cup in South Africa, was out with an eye infection.

Neuer did not wear the No. 1 jersey - Enke's teammates laid it on the bench that night as a tribute, so Neuer wore No. 12 - but it was, in many ways, the beginning of a transition. It was not Neuer's first career international appearance, but it was significant.

Five years later, Reng said, Enke's wife, Teresa, has moved away from Hanover, relocating to Cologne, about 2 1/2 hours away. She works for a foundation named after Enke, which aims to raise awareness about mental health issues in sports, but she has also found a measure of peace after leaving the tiny town where she and her husband lived.

"Everyone recognized her there," Reng said. "She would have been the wife of the dead goalkeeper forever."

Neuer now wears the No. 1 jersey. After Enke's death, Loew most likely would have picked Adler to be his starter in South Africa, but Adler was hurt in the run-up to the tournament, and Loew went with Neuer, who was 24 at the time.

Firmly established, Neuer played for Germany at the 2012 European Championship (where it lost in the semifinals) and again as Germany breezed through qualifying for the 2014 World Cup. At this tournament, Neuer has allowed four goals in six games. Germany won its group before beating Algeria, France and Brazil in the knockout rounds.

Even the most biased observers concede that Enke would surely have lost his place to Neuer at some point - Reng guessed that they would have battled for the starting spot at the 2012 Euros - and that Neuer's reflexes, precision and savvy in controlling the defensive third of the field are rare.

Yet it is still difficult for German fans not to think about what might have been. The lineage of goalkeepers in Germany is storied, but there will always be a hole, an emptiness, left by the presumed starter who did not take his chance.

"Everyone will watch on Sunday and hope Neuer plays as well as he can," Reng said. "But Robert will never be forgotten. If you ask 80 million Germans about Robert Enke, they will tell you that they remember."